Bloody Ghost is a top-down action survival horror game in which you must proceed through levels full of enemy soldiers, aggressive life-forms, and environmental hazards to save your troops. Each level is laid out like a maze, and your objective is to open up gates throughout, doing as little harm to yourself as possible before escaping through the exit. Although the game has a rich (albeit very convoluted) storyline, the gameplay is no more compelling because of it. Bloody Ghost may be a unique offering, but that doesn't make it fun.
Bloody Ghost has a complicated story, which is pretty confusing if you're not paying very close attention. As a soldier of the BRUE Coin platoon, you're attempting to find your fellow soldiers and captain. However, there seems to be something physically wrong with you. You find out as the game goes on that your headaches are reflective of a deeper problem: You're being controlled by a sinister enemy named Igor Loscoff. This would have a lot more meaning if it were reflected in the gameplay in any way, but in truth, the story is just slapped between levels, so it makes little sense inside or outside the context of the game.
Each level of Bloody Ghost consists of a starting point and an exit, and each level is swarming with hostiles that are trying to prevent your getaway. You must explore the levels fully--picking up health, armor, and ammunition--while looking for color-coded switches that will unlock barriers and ultimately let you leave through the exit door. The enemies move in different patterns and formations, which means you must carefully observe their movements before attempting to confront them. Some enemies fire weapons and can die at your hand, while others are invincible and must merely be avoided. There are turret guns and lasers, as well, to further impede your path. Although there is a diverse offering of bad guys, it's obvious from the start that the best way to complete each level is to run past (or through) it. Often, there are so many enemies onscreen that the game leaves you little choice but to make a break for it. At other times, you're placed in a lone hallway with a single invincible enemy that moves almost randomly. The game's dynamic would have been richer had the focus been to learn patterns and adapt to them. As it is, there's little point, because you can just as easily head straight for the exit.
The controls are jerky, and you can walk only in four directions. This makes timing your pathways with the similarly moving enemies easier, but it's simplistic and, at times, frustrating. If you have a battery power-up, though, you can turn on the raid mode, which lets you run much more swiftly through the environment. However, the mode ends when the battery is depleted. This makes the game move a little more quickly, but it also makes it much harder to avoid and shoot enemies. Playing do-si-do with the enemies is at the heart of the game, but you can also shoot down a few of them (mostly enemy soldiers) while surveying a room and contemplating how to cross it. You acquire better weapons every few levels. They're useful, but they're not essential to gameplay. The best thing about weapon upgrades is when (as with the submachine gun, for example) they have more bullets than your handgun. Since you must reload once your clip is empty--and it's easy to forget about reloading unless you make it a habit--having the extra bullets is a luxury. Even though the gunplay is a secondary element of the game, it's nice to be fully loaded just in case.
The levels have unique layouts that can be accessed via a map on the status screen. However, trial and error is an easier way to get around. Besides, the levels are not big enough to make the map necessary anyway. It takes only a few short minutes to wander through the whole level to figure out where the switches are. You might die and have to start the level over, but each one is so short that the sacrifice is worth it.
On the LG VX7000, there are a fair amount of visual details in the gameplay, particularly in the mission and status screens. The heads-up display presents your health, armor, ammo, and battery-life levels clearly. It's easy to tell which objects are destructible and which ones are worth breaking to find hidden passageways. There are some graphical anomalies--like moving parts of the environment (like little squares of dirt or grates) that seem to represent invisible enemies--that could have been presented more clearly. The sound effects are a little crude but effective, so you will hear sounds that indicate most of the events of fighting and confrontation. From time to time, a sound effect won't play, which is noticeable but isn't completely disruptive.
Although Bloody Ghost makes an attempt at offering compelling story-driven survival horror gameplay, it's not anywhere close to following through. Take a cue from the game's unpleasant name, and avoid it.
